How do Chilean seniors think about arguing?
Their motivations, understandings, and emotional registration of interpersonal arguing
This project investigates orientations toward interpersonal arguing among Chilean seniors
(N = 243), having a mean age of 72 years. We found no prior attention to seniors in the interpersonal arguing
literature, and only a little to Chileans. Sited within the US framework for studying interpersonal arguing (see Hample, 2016), this project collected seniors’ responses to survey items indexing
argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, argument frames, personalization of conflict, and power distance. Our exploratory work
involved use of a second sample of Chilean undergraduates (N = 80) for comparison. Comparisons showed that the
seniors were less likely to argue, especially for play. Seniors were more interested in asserting dominance and were less
cooperative and civil. Few sex differences were observed among the seniors, whereas quite a few had been previously found for
Chilean undergraduates. These differences are attributed to the age of the seniors, although the possibility of a cadre effect is
considered. Neither Chilean seniors nor younger adults displayed negative correlations between approaching and avoiding arguments,
a result which has become an increasingly urgent theoretical issue across the world.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Chilean seniors
- 3.Aging and personality
- 4.Sex differences in arguing orientations
- 5.Summarizing people’s orientations to interpersonal arguing
- 6.Method
- 6.1The senior sample
- 6.2The undergraduate sample
- 6.3Instrumentation and procedures
- 7.Results
- 7.1Comparing chilean seniors and undergraduates
- 7.2Comparing men and women
- 7.3Correlations among the measures
- 8.Discussion
- 8.1Immediate implications
- 8.2More speculative implications
- 8.2.1Linguistic capability
- 8.2.2Political/Social considerations
- 9.Conclusions
-
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